Topic: Best MotherBoard for Butterfly Labs Monarch PCI card? (Read 10110 times)

Shame Intel's current range of motherboards is the last ones they're making.  They're going out of motherboards totally. 

By the time Monache arrives, we'll be using quantum computers that run off farts.

Use any intel original motherboards

   175 watts............yeah right,times 3=525 watts.BFL is always off on power estimates by power of 3    And late by "2 weeks" times infinity 

Motherboard?

What about the ASIC chip? Would you not want to wait till they have that done before worrying about a Mobo to fit given they have not even tested that prototype?

Exactly. There is no way you will dissipate the heat from multiple Monarch cards inside a closed case, and even running them on risers, multiple 350W cards will put out a LOT of heat.

I would guess any multiple PCI-E motherboard that has been tested by people on these forums would work quite well. Check the forums.

***edit****

They now have a 300 GH/s card on their website available for preorder  , with a 175 W rating.

That actually sounds a bit more reasonable, assuming it ever ships. 

bashing BFL is always good  

yes, as in possibly quantum or even using photons instead of current..  *smiles*

yh 10 cards would be 3kw that's plenty to heat one up

Or a jacuzzi 

watercooling is best as you can direct the heat wherever you want and even heat a swimming pool if you used an heat exchanger

For some people in some locations the generated heat is just an added bonus. There have been several reports of folks heating greenhouses with GPU farms. Might be a good idea to consider using the heat instead of blowing even more juice trying to get rid of it. Efficiency matters.

watercooling would be a good option if they made it a high flow block with standard fittings a 1080 rad will cool well over 1kw and still not be to loud

6 x 1080 rads 20 cards on 20 slot back plane would be fairly easy to do as long as drivers work well

That is an option however it eliminates the selling point of using a PCIe interface and a standard GPU form factor.  Unless you plan on having multiple cards in a closed rackmount case you gain more flexibility just using USB or plain ole serial interface (bitfury).  You can arrange them however you want and are constrained by slot spacing or thermal limits of a single chassis. The reason to use PCIe would be to rack up a bunch of them but given the cooler design (not suited for no 0 slots between cards) and the high power consumption that isn't possible. 

So you get all the complexity, cost, and risk for nothing.   The only advantage in theory does not exist in reality.

buy a 20x pcie-16  backplane and run them that way

Really?  I'm surprised it didn't happen in the second post.  Anyone thinking BFL is anything other than a long con is a fool.

This is a new anti-bfl thread.  Not unlike the other 2500 anti-BFL threads:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/must-read-butterfly-labs-ftc-complaint-279587

If you're serious about ordering a bunch of Monarchs, what about setting it up to utilize oil immersion? Obviously it would probably be a bit more expensive, and setting it up may be tricky, but the cooling aspect may no longer be a problem.


Side note: It's amazing how quickly this thread derailed into hating BFL.

The best motherboard for the BFL monarch is the motherboard that has the BFL monarch in it.
It won't matter at all... as long as you can find one.

Correct, removing 1-1.7kW of heat generation in a small sealed form factor is challenging.  Water cooling is an option but with the pumps and tubes, it would be quite difficult to fit into a 4U case.  Open air cooling is by far the most cost effective way to deal with this heat like D&T said. 

Cool stuff huh.  Makes me miss the days I worked in a datacenter.  Always fun getting delivery of the awesomely expensive servers.

If BFL was serious about datacenter ready they would have designed the card to operate in that manner but they didn't. Datacenter servers (not just that monster in the video but even smaller 2 or 4 card GPGPU servers) don't have any fans on the CPUs and GPUs (or anything else).  Everything is cooled using the "case" fans pushing air in the front across all the components and out the back.



No fan, inside the shroud the heatsink runs the length of the card.  The server is responsible for pushing air through the card.  Notice the two versions and the "airflow ->" marks.  This is because there are two different versions of the heatsink.  It has more largers spaces between fins on the intake side and denser fins on the exhaust side.  This helps to evenly cool the card.  Still even NVidia isn't crazy enough to try and cram multiple 350W cards into a chassis.  The Tesla uses ~200W.



If BFL offered a 200W, passively cooled hashing card, and showed some mock ups of the non functional but physical card handling the thermal load in a densely loaded server well that would be different.  As it stands now it is just laughable.  Take the option to connect by USB. GPU pull some of their power from the PCIe backplane.  That is why despite the PCIe limiting the 8pin connector to 150W it is possible to power a 325W 7990.  Two 8 pin connectors (150W ea) plus 75W from motherboard.  Well in "USB mode" the hashing card won't be able to pull power from the motherboard.  So is BFL going to require three 8 pin connectors or just have the two connectors 17% over spec?



BTW back in 2011 when I was running out of space for GPUs I was looking into a similar rack with 8 dual width slot.  Very cool stuff but they are insanely expensive.  It was cheaper to build twice as many 4 GPU rigs instead.  Actually I think it was cheaper to build four 4 GPU rigs than one monster 8 GPU rackmount.  They may be cheaper now but I doubt it.

Amateurs!
Simple overview: (pull out the crappy teslas and replace with double height bitcoin cards...in theory)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LmzV87-b9M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1pM5WtAtV0

Most modern motherboards don't have PCI slots anymore, only PCI-e

 Your Monarchs will need a very large home to "incubate" in,something like this MAY work,



Seeing as BFL will double the size & power consumption,as per usual.But,not to worry,you folks will have PLENTY of time to plan 

Uh, the advantage is that if it's PCIe you'll actually be able to use more then one on a modern motherboard...?

Not that these will ever ship, but a PCI card would be ridiculous. The idea is you can pop out a GPU and put one of these in - that means PCIe

No, I don't care if it is PCI or PCIe. I also don't see a advantage or disadvantage,

Just wondering if it isn't more likely.

History of BFL shows, that pics mean nothing and on the homepage it says:


Also for am miner there is no need for a fast link like PCIe. And wouldn't PCI be cheaper?

My Imagination of this is still, they minimize their existing design. Glue it on a PCI USB-Controller and connect is via USB. Put a nice housing with a GPU cooler around and ready is the monarch.

The best motherboard is the one you don't waste your $ on waiting for a card that will never ship.

 Take your pick of any high-density-PCIe data-center-style board. It really should not make a difference as to which you choose.

 I would, however, recommend purchasing the following accessory.

for posterity.

Really?  and how many "folks" have made ROI with BFL products??  and I'm not talking about $$ if you paid in BTC - I'm talking making your BTC back...  If you bought last year when bitcoin was at $30/per and you gave BFL 2500 BTC for a mini-rig and they only shipped a 1/3 of your order, your most likely never going to make the coins back and you would've been better off not mining at all!

I was a late asic adopter so I jumped on BFL with a variety of pre-orders in March and not only have I not seen anything, I don't expect to get anything until the end of the year.  WHAT'S WORSE is that I've put pre-orders in (around JULY) with 2 other companies and I suspect that they will deliver BEFORE BFL!  I'm not saying that BFL is a scam but they have had serious issues...  I just hope they figure out how to fix it, get things rolling and meet some of the anticipated goals.

Regarding a motherboard - are you nuts or just excited?  Do some research but don't buy anything until they have FIRM specs - or just plan to plug it in USB... either way it needs a power supply...  Don't expect it to be PCI-e just because that what the say on the site!  Again, I'm not calling them liars or cheats, it's just incredibly difficult to anticipate new technology...

I doubt it.  The order page and details provided by BFL have consistently said PCIe.  The photoshoped product photo is a reference GPU fprm factor with a PCIe connector (although it is x16 not x1).  What would be the advantage of PCI?  You got a motherboard from 1999 you want to bring back to life?

Get a fireproof/meltproof mobo is my recommendation.

Might need 1000W PSU by the time they're done too. And it might come in at only 400MH/s.

By the time you wait for them to ship they will have a new card that you will again.. wait to buy.. its a loop with no break value really

Yes I do, but I will wait when it will be ready to ship product and then I decide.

All we can do is try to warn people who may be new to buying into ASIC technology...

I made a relevant post in this thread about how BFL is not the only company with a Gen 2 28nm ASIC.... like they claim.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/press-release-from-bfl-regarding-the-monarch-279109

www.cointerra.com

regards!

Wouldn't it be more likely that this will just be a PCI and not a PCI-E card?
(As all here are stating you would need PCI-E slots)

Probably just a PCI USB-Controller, on which the device is mounted.

Well, that's not what Moore's law really says ;-)

Moores law says that technology increases and doubles every 18 months.

Monarch will be available in time for technology to double.

 

I agree. Just pointing out that there are different takes on the situation.
But on a whole... yes, it sucks balls pretty much.

 Unfortunately, you are speaking to a very small and lucky group of investors.

 The rest are still holding the bag waiting for their pre-orders.

Some people have a different experience with BFL. Folks that have ROI'd and doubled/tripled their investment already are much more likely to pre order.

i just cant believe some people in this thread are actually thinking of preordering with bfl after knowing its track record

Maybe when the Monarch will be available the USB technology will be obsolete and no one device will have this old connection.

Warning - I put up a shelf for my little singles 3 months ago.

Wife is pretty tired of dusting that empty shelf now.. 

Are people actually thinking of buying this crap? (Monarch).

I run a pair of 7950 in a big tower case, and it's difficult enough to cool (Fractal Design Define XL with several 140mm and 120mm fans).  Keeps the bottom half of the house warm, though.

+1

BFL pundit at work.

Promoting BFL wont make it come true, I'm afraid.

You have to use water cooling

by the time these are released motherboards will likely be totally different from today. i would look into this closer to release date

In motherboard terms, 6 months to a year is an eternity.  There's plenty of boards that'll take 4 double slot PCI-E cards, but that's the limit to a normal ATX board.  My P8B-WS will take 4 double slot cards, and it's marketed as a workstation/server board.  By the Haswell-E might have come along, with enough PCI-E lanes to cope.

Beyond that, you're in to EATX which aren't cheap.  Then you're looking at 4U cases at least, and probably 2KW PSU.  It's all going to be big money, and by then probably pointless due to difficulty (unless BTC goes up to $200 or more).

Besides, my understanding was that the Monarchs were still run off a USB, and the cards were only the PCI-E form factor for ease of mounting.  Am I wrong?  If that's the case, then any case with lots of slots and a miniITX (or even NUC) motherboard would be more than sufficient.

Here is a fun experiment.   Put 3x 7990s in a sealed 3U or 4U rackmount chassis and try to keep the cards from burning up.  There is a reason that people use open rigs.  Trying to remove that kind of heat is next to impossible.  Even if BFL delivers the form factor is next to useless because you are never going to be able to fill a rackmount server with 3 to 5 of them.

350W estimate? Could be 1000W in reality easily

Troll sighting.

just stating facts

Did you come in to make that (well) overused joke, or do you have anything constructive to add?

uh when do you think you'll have these in hand? i hope you like waiting atleast a year   

Could even buy something like This, strip the MB/PSU out of it, install 4-7 Monarchs, and hook them all up to a 7-port USB hub connected to a rPi (or some sort of other small form factor PC if the Pi is too weak). You could get away with 1 PSU if you're only running 4, but you'd prolly need 2 PSUs if you're looking to do more than that.

Remember that you also don't have to use PCIe. They have stated they will also ship with a USB port, so you could put any motherboard in there, and connect them all using USB.

thanks that makes sense since I cant buy fifty Monarchs.

I wonder what the best mobo for three cards is?  I'll go Google that.....

You can find all sorts of motherboards that support 5 PCIe x1 slots. The issue is A) Finding a rack-mount chassis that can accommodate 4-5 double-wide PCIe cards (that isn't $4,000), and B) finding a PSU that can power 5x 350W cards. You're looking at almost 2KW of power for every board. No cool. Not cheap.

My suggestion? Buy some 3U or 4U chassis that accept ATX motherboards and support 7 PCI slots. Buy any motherboard that is known to work with at least 3 GPUs, and put 3 Monarchs in them. You'd probably want a 1500W PSU, but we don't know what kind of PSU hookups the Monarchs will take.

Looking for opinions on best MotherBoards for Butterfly Labs Monarch PCI card?  I have not built a data center style board before.  I would possibly buy 5 at a time, and then wait to fill them in.

If anyone can point out imperative major design features, and any favorites, it would be much appreciated.

Thanks.